'Choice' in Chechnya: "chose the freedom sack or we kill you!"

Chechen students from an Islamic university wearing Islamic veils, during events marking a newly established holiday called ‘The Day of Chechen Women’ in Chechnya’s regional capital, Grozny. Chechnya’s strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has imposed an Islamic dress code on women, and his feared security forces have used paintball guns, threats and insults against those refusing to obey. In a 40-page report released Thursday, Human Rights Watch condemned the campaign as a flagrant violation of women’s rights and urged other nations to raise the issue with Moscow….

Veiling enforced in Chechen campaign of intimidation

By thugs inside as well as outside the Chechen government. Human Rights Watch has published a detailed update on its report fromÂ last November, in which it noted that Chechnya’s enforcement of an Islamic dress code violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Where is Obama, who argued so passionately for the “choice” to wear the hijab in Cairo?

Below are excerpts from “You Dress According to Their Rules,” fromÂ Human Rights Watch, March 10 (thanks to JW):

… Kadyrov has made the “virtue campaign” for women a policy priority since 2006. He made numerous public statements, including on Chechen television, which appears to be under his control, regarding the need for women to adhere to “modesty laws,” by, among other things, wearing a headscarf and following men’s orders. He has described women as men’s “property” and publicly condoned honor killings. Other Chechen officials have echoed his views in their own public remarks. Several dozen women interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Chechnya indicated that they found the virtue campaign deeply offensive but could not protest it openly, fearing for their own security as well as that of their relatives. […]

The enforcement of a compulsory Islamic dress code on women in Chechnya violates their rights to private life, personal autonomy, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion, thought, and conscience. It is also a form of gender-based discrimination prohibited under international treaties to which Russia is a party, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. This policy is also in breach of Russia’s Constitution, which guarantees freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and gender equality. […]

In a televised interview in July 2010, Kadyrov expressed unambiguous approval of the paintball attacks by professing his readiness to “give an award to” the men engaged in these activities and arguing that the targeted women deserved this treatment. Then, at the start of the Ramadan holiday in mid-August 2010, groups of men in traditional Islamic dress claiming to represent the republic’s Islamic High Council (muftiat) started approaching women in the center of Grozny, publicly shaming them for violating Islamic modesty laws and handing out brochures with detailed descriptions of appropriate Islamic dress for females. They instructed women to wear headscarves and to have their skirts well below the knees and sleeves well below the elbow.Â The purported envoys from the Islamic High Council were soon joined by aggressive young men who pulled on the women’s sleeves, skirts, and hair; touched the bare skin on their arms; accused them of being dressed like harlots; and made other humiliating remarks and gestures. In interviews with Human Rights Watch, dozens of victims and witnesses described a pattern of harassment that continued throughout Ramadan, and that in some cases involved law enforcement authorities as enforcers of the women’s dress code.

Although Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has directed Chechen authorities to look into the paintball attacks, the federal authorities have not otherwise taken any steps to put an end to the Chechen leadership’s enforcement of a compulsory Islamic dress code in Chechnya. They have also failed to indicate in any public way that describing women as property and justifying violence against women is unacceptable. […]

… Women caught without headscarves in the street have been publicly humiliated on local television.Â The Chechen courts now apply rules drawn from Sharia law, in contravention of Russian law. As a result, for example, a woman who is widowed may have any children over 12 years of age and her property taken away from her by her deceased husband’s family.[…]

Another victim, a woman of 29, told a Human Rights Watch researcher that on June 6 she was walking down the same street in the afternoon with two other young women, all of them without headscarves, when two cars drove up to them. Bearded men in military-style black uniforms, who looked like law enforcement officials, shot at them from the cars’ windows with pink and blue paint, screaming, “Cover your hair, harlots!”Â Male passersby applauded the attackers and yelled, “Serves you right for having no shame!” […]

And a threatening leaflet:

Dear Sisters!

We want to remind you that, in accordance with the rules and customs of Islam, every Chechen woman isÂ OBLIGEDÂ TOÂ WEARÂ AÂ HEADSCARF.

Are you not disgusted when you hear the indecent “compliments” and proposals that are addressed to you because you have dressed so provocatively and have not covered your head?Â THINK ABOUTÂ IT!!!

Today we have sprayed you with paint, but this is only aÂ WARNING!!!Â DON’TCOMPELÂ US TOÂ RESORTÂ TOÂ MORE PERSUASIVE MEASURES!!!”

MAKHACHKALA, Russia â€” Police in Russia’s restive southern province of Dagestan say that seven policemen have been wounded by militants.
Local police spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said that several gunmen drove to a police precinct in the town of Kizilyurt late Monday. They sprayed the building with automatic gunfire and then detonated a car bomb, which shattered windows and damaged the roof.

In a separate incident Tuesday, police shot and killed three suspected militants on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Makhachkala….

Dagestan has emerged as the main base for Islamic militants, who launch near daily attacks on police and other authorities.

(CNN) — Two blasts — the second coming after police and passersby had gathered at the site of the first — killed seven people and wounded 18 Tuesday evening in the Russian republic of Chechnya, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
The state-run agency said the first blast occurred when officers attempted to detain a suspected militant in the Chechen capital of Grozny. About 30 minutes after that explosion, a second blast hit the same area after people had gathered there, RIA Novosti said….

Rebels in Chechnya started out fighting for independence in the 1990s, but in recent years the fight has been aimed more at imposing Islamist rule and asserting their authority in the area.

The standard of living in the southwestern republic is poor compared with the rest of Russia. Unemployment is rampant and infant mortality is high. In addition, the Chechen population of about 1 million is mostly made up of Sunni Muslims, who maintain a distinctly separate cultural and linguistic identity from Russian Orthodox Christians.

Note CNN’s spin: this is all about poverty, not jihad. That’s why you see so many Haitian suicide bombers.